Erik found himself surrounded by a horde of terrapedes. Their sharp claws churned up the sand as they scuttled and snapped their jaws.
Despite the chaos surrounding him, Erik remained composed as he tightly held onto his sheathed Flyssa.
The sound of steel reverberated through the air as he unsheathed the blade. Its tal glead, thirsty for violence.
The first Terrapede attacked, shooting forward with startling speed. Its mandibles gaped wide, ready to crush Erik's torso.
But with lightning reflexes, Erik stepped into the strike zone and pivoted his hip, dodging the snapping jaws.
With the fluidity of a master painter's brushstroke, he brought the Flyssa around in a vicious backhand slash.
The razor-sharp blade cleaved clean through the creature's carapace, sending up a spray of viscous fluids and blood.
The Terrapede crumbled like a withering flower, its life force seeping away into the arid sands like tears absorbed by a desert.
Ten more took the fallen one's place, their legs producing rhythmic clicks and shuffling sounds as they skittered over the sand in a coordinated attack. They surrounded Erik, seeking to overwhelm him with their numbers.
But Erik remained firm on the spot, the blade held on a low guard. However, that didn't an he wasn't focusing on the surroundings.
From all sides, the Terrapedes ca together as one, attacking with their gnashing mandibles.
Erik's energy exploded at that very mont. Like a rocket ascending from Earth's surface, he burst forth and brought to life a srizing performance.
The sword style his master devised, the Crypt of the Desert, was nothing short of extraordinary. With minimal yet absurdly fast movents, the swordsman embodied death incarnate.
The terrapedes didn't stand a chance to even approach him. They began perishing one by one, but to any observer, it appeared as if they t their demise at the sa ti.
[LEVEL UP.]
While Ignoring the notification, Erik raised his sword to his face, peering ahead to witness the ten terrapedes lifeless on the ground. However, for every ten that had fallen, twice as many as before now erged.
One Terrapede reared up, exposing its underbelly. Erik was forced to leave his position and leaped. He run up on its torso, using it as a foothold to launch himself upwards.
At the peak of his ascent, he flipped and brought the blade straight down, impaling the creature through its head.
It spasd in its death throes while Erik landed, wasting no ti to engage the others.
From his low crouch, Erik shot forward and severed the legs from one terrapede before it could react.
As it collapsed, he transitioned into a spinning upward slice that caught another under the jaw, decapitating it.
The remaining creature snapped at him furiously, but he slipped just out of reach before delivering a fatal stab through its eye cluster.
On and on the battle raged, with Erik cutting down each terrapede that dared attack him. He fought with chanical precision.
The creatures sought desperately to surround and overwhelm him to get a piece of his tender at, and pushed by the overwhelming need to devour the man who killed their kin.
Erik leaped and spun between enemies, the blade singing as it sliced through exoskeletons and sent up sprays of insect blood.
The bodies piled up around him, but still the Terrapedes ca. These beasts knew no fear or self-preservation, driven only by primal bloodlust.
But Erik had been honed into a flawless killing machine, and the Terrapedes were no match for his skills.
If Erik had more mana, he would have used his many brain crystal powers to deal with the monsters. The problem was that they were too many, and he didn't have enough mana to unleash such a destruction to end things fast and with minimal effort.
Though he couldn't always do so, from ti to ti, he found himself compelled to employ Aerokynesis to dispatch dense clusters of terrapedes. If he allowed those clusters to get too close, he'd be in a predicant as dire as trying to walk through a maze of tangled vines on the ground.
Flyssa twirling in lethal arcs all around his body. The razor tip found every vital area, and the Terrapedes fell into pieces.
Then Erik would explode upwards, launching off a corpse to flip over the attackers and strike from an unexpected angle. His movents flowed from one kill to the next with perfect continuity.
Despite the intense fight, Erik did not tire. His stamina was legendary, muscles honed to tireless perfection. With mana nearly at full capacity, he could go on for a while.
Instead, the Terrapedes exhausted themselves. Their numbers reduced. But Erik would not stop with the death of one or two. He intended to annihilate this colony of terrapedes.
Then a sudden tremor jolted Erik, leaving him bewildered and wondering about the source of this unexpected upheaval.
The ground beneath him quivered like a slumbering giant awakening from its deep sleep, causing the sands to dance and swirl around his feet in a disoriented frenzy.
Then he saw it. A colossal terrapede, three tis the size of the others, erupted from beneath the sands.
It towered over Erik, mandibles clacking.
"Is it really you, Oni-chan? "
Erik's fingers clenched on the hilt of his Flyssa. With a blur of motion, he began a waltz around the colossal beast, akin to a matador facing a raging bull.
As he moved around the monster, through the shifting sands, the other Terrapedes lunged from every direction, their mandibles snapping hungrily at him.
Erik dispatched the attacking monsters with fast strikes, preventing them from closing in on him and obstructing his way.
With each deft step, he approached the monstrous terrapede, his Flyssa flashing like a lightning bolt.
Swift as a desert storm, he carved deep gashes along so of the creature's massive legs, crippling its mobility. Then, with a nimble retreat, he evaded the beast's attempts to retaliate.
The colossal terrapede screeched in fury and pain as Erik's blade carved into its limbs. It reared up, trying to smash him under its weight, but he rolled aside with ease.
As the creature's underbelly was exposed, Erik launched upwards and drove the Flyssa deep into its thorax. Foul fluids gushed from the wound as the Terrapede thrashed in agony.
Wrenching the blade free, Erik dodged a swipe from the monster's barbed tail. He landed and sprinted to his side, hacking at the joints of the monster's many legs as he passed.
The Terrapede stumbled, insect blood splattering the sands. It whipped around with shocking speed, but Erik had already vaulted behind it.
Then, as the monster was big enough, he sprinted up the carapace and plunged the Flyssa into one of the creature's eyes.
KYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Now blinded on one side, the terrapede flailed, trying to dislodge Erik. He held on, twisting the blade deeper into its head.
The monster ramd itself against the sand below, launching itself like a kid diving into a pool, but finally knocking Erik loose. He tumbled through the air and landed in a crouch, shaken but unhard.
The Terrapede swiftly regained its bearings, its lone eye scanning the surroundings for any sign of Erik. Upon spotting him, it abruptly halted its movents, fixating on his presence.
Within the monster's solitary eye, an intense and uncontrollable fury boiled like molten lava, consuming its focus on Erik with the intensity of a relentless wildfire.
KYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
The Terrapede charged, seeking to crush Erik. The young man waited with a smirk on his face.
"Don't try this, bro!"
At the very last second, Erik dove to the side, evading the creature's charge. The monster slamd full force into the sandy ground below, sending a billowing plu of sand into the air as its form crashed down with a thunderous impact.
Erik seized the opportunity and leaped, delivering an overhead chop that severed one of its mandibles.
KYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
His assault continued, the Flyssa carving off chunks of the exoskeleton and slicing through sinew.
The Terrapede tried to pin him against the sand, but he scrambled up the horizontal surface, evading its massive body.
While constantly moving and killing other approaching terrapedes, he rained down precise blows on the vulnerable points of this monstrous terrapede.
Slowly, the wounds drained the fight from the massive beast. It could not touch Erik as he danced around it, the blade chanting death with each movent.
What had seed an invincible titan was reduced to a shambling hulk, ichor staining the sands dark purple.
With a last burst of effort, Erik landed on the Terrapede's back and plunged the Flyssa to the hilt through the top of its skull.
It shuddered violently for several seconds before collapsing into the churned-up sand. Erik wrenched his blade free and gazed down at the fallen behemoth.
However, there were still a significant amount of terrapedes that needed to be eradicated, and they showed no intention of allowing Erik to leave peacefully. Not that he intended to do so.
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